23 May 2016

Losing a Sibling

Siblings are those weird fascinating creatures who
will stick around no matter what you do, only to mercilessly laugh at
you later on. You grow up with these adorable idiots and probably share
more of your life with them than anyone else. They pretty much know
everything there is to know about you.

I too have a sibling. He is my younger brother and
we are very close to each other. I am just about 3 years older than
he is. I lost him to an accident a few months back and I just can’t
process that fact.

Some say time heals all but I wonder if even eons
can alleviate even an iota of my grief. It’s such a surreal existence;
I don’t even feel like myself. I do everything I have always done.
Nothing really has changed if you take a superficial glance at my life.
But if I am to be honest, nothing is the same either. Whenever I see
a funny meme or listen to a really good song instantly some part of
me is like “Gotta share it with Boo”. Boo is the nickname I had
given him after we saw Baby’s Day Out way back when we were little,
silly but it stuck and he would get so embarrassed if I blurted it out
in public. It’s always fun to do that. Suddenly the one person with
whom I shared everything is missing and it feels like huge hole in my
life. I don’t think I will ever be able to move on from this, you
can’t expect something like this to not change you and your life.
I will, however, have to learn to live with it, learn to live with the
fact that I no longer have anyone to talk to in our weird secret sibling
language, no one to share those countless inside jokes with, no one
to steal stuff from, no one to annoy, no one to fight with. Every time
something reminds me of him, a little bit of my heart breaks and that
every time seems to be happening all the time. Every time I pass by
his college, or look at a guitar or even sit to eat at home, I realise
there are 3 people sitting around it and not four. I have become an
emotional yo-yo careening between ‘I will be fine somehow’ and ‘I
miss him way more than I will ever admit’. Life is cruel it doesn’t
give you time to mourn; yet I am glad I have all these little daily
things to do because if I let that sorrow consume me I know I will drown
in it. The pain is like a river, it ebbs and rises but it never stops
and I am just something being carried along in the wake of its current.
I have never felt so helpless in all my life before. This sense of loss
of control is terrifying to say the least. Loss is numbing, it takes
over all of you, submerging you to the point where little things like
getting out of your bed in the morning feel like a massive battle.

These past few months have felt like an out-of-body
experience. It cannot be me who smiles and goes about her life; it is
most definitely someone else because I am not that strong. The real
me is just wound up in a fetal position trying not to freaking breakdown
every single day. I didn’t even accompany my parents on a trip because
I just couldn’t imagine him not being with us. I feel like he’s
here with me because he cannot just have left me. When I wake up every
morning, and before I go to bed I think of him and as much as that hurts;
it also gives me the strength to get up, go out and live my life. At
this point I feel like I should live life as fully as I can, live life
enough for the both us. My brother really wanted to go to Japan and
try adventure sports and that is definitely on my to-do list. There
are two guitars at home and when I can bear to look at them again I
think I will try learning how to play them.

He was the one person who was always in my corner,
the one person who always had my back through thick and thin and all
of a sudden he isn’t here anymore. I still have his number saved on
my phone.

I wish this had never happened; I wish I could go
back in time and undo all of this. I wish it’s a terrible nightmare
I will eventually snap out of. Oh, how I wish!

I got this inked so and ever since then I have felt
a modicum of peace in knowing I have him in my heart with me always
and forever. All I have learnt is that you have to hold on to your memories
and simply keep the people you lose held close to your heart.

For J.K.
Rowling so truly says,

“But know this; the ones that love us never
really leave us. And you can always find them in here.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Pritha Ray is a 2nd year student of Philosophy studying at Gokhale Memorial College.